Tag: Art

When big isn’t necessarily better

angela findlay4 Comments

Reflections on: IN PROCESS… a life, a film, a book, an exhibition, The Vaults, Stroud. Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

 

“We must, we must, we must increase the bust.

The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys depend on us.”

I remember chanting that with my boarding school roommates as a teenager, elbows flung back in a futile attempt – in my case at least – to inflate our adolescent chests. Bigger was definitely better, or so we believed.

Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Skyscrapers, cars, salaries, houses… In so many areas of modern society, ‘big’ still equals ‘better.’ More followers, more likes, more headlines, more sales. The biggest countries led by the most powerful leaders and largest militaries make the most noise. And yet we know, quantity doesn’t equate to quality. Magnitude doesn’t always reflect meaning or value.

This idea – that bigger isn’t always better – is something I’ve seen reflected both in the trajectory of my great great aunt Joan’s life and in my own development as an artist. (If you are new to Joan’s story, please see my previous blogs for background.)

Patshull Hall, Staffordshire

Joan’s tent

Joan grew up in a 147-room stately home in Staffordshire. Yet she spent her final weeks in a single, often soggy Meade tent pitched in a remote Himalayan Valley, surrounded not by grandeur but by shepherds, wildflowers and the sound of rain. She had traded scale for purpose. And her joy, it seems, had grown as her material load had lessened.

My own artistic journey has followed a similarly inverse curve.

Painting a mural in Sydney, 1987

I began large, unable to contain any drawing or painting within the boundaries of paper or canvas. My work spilled onto walls, first private then public, then grew further to fill stage backdrops for theatres or touring bands. Various mishaps including a paint-splattered boss’s car and a disastrous commission to paint the backdrop for INXS KICK album tour in 1987, which promptly cracked and fell off in large chunks when rolled up, nudged me toward the more forgiving surface of prison walls. There, no amount of damage could make the environment worse than it already was.

The light danced, 120x120cm

Years later, I turned my focus to canvases of my own, their size dictated by the available studio space and commercial considerations of galleries. And most recently, to works just 28x28cm – or smaller. I have replaced the vast audiences of art fairs with the quiet intimacy of just six or seven visitors at a time into the two vaults beneath my home in Stroud’s Cemetery.

The Vaults

Those vaults now house In Process… a deeply personal exhibition about Joan, her life and the resonance her death still holds for me, our family and small communities she encountered in India.

In one vault, where gravediggers once hung their tools and I now hang mine, visitors watch a short film projected into the open lid of an old trunk telling the story of Joan Margaret Legge.

In the other, where those same workers drank tea, ghostly white plaster casts hang like three-dimensional botanical drawings reminiscent of the specimens Joan collected and sent to Kew Gardens.

‘138 days’

A series of square sketchbooks chart the 138 days I followed Joan’s 1939 diary entries. Starting on 17th February when I stepped into her shoes as she boarded a ship to India, I step out of them again on 4th July, the day she slipped off the edge of a Himalayan path to her death. One photograph, one sketchbook page, each day a quiet re-embodiment across time. Not a recreation of her journey, but a chance to listen more deeply to the changing tone of her voice in the final months of her life.

At the heart of the exhibition is its smallest piece: a re-working of a first edition of Frank Smythe’s Valley of Flowers, the very book that inspired Joan’s expedition. Through collage, drawings and pressed flowers, it now tells the stories of three visitors to the valley rather than just one: his, hers and mine. Wrapped in brown paper and tied with string like an archival package, the book invites visitors to wear white gloves to turn its delicate pages, not because it is precious in a monetary sense, but out of respect, Unlike most artworks, these ones are meant to be handled and engaged with.

‘Three journeys in one’

There is nothing for sale. No press campaign. No sponsorship. Just a quiet space, tucked away in a garden, found by invitation or chance. A strange but deliberate choice, and to me, a more authentic reflection of the humbleness of where Joan’s life ended than any traditional gallery could offer.

What Joan lost in material possessions, she gained in purpose and joy. Her life distilled into what nine porters could carry. She found a sense of completeness long before she had completed her journey.

That’s what I hope to convey in the improvised, immersive pieces shown in the warm belly of my limestone vaults. People forgive imperfection and lack of polish as they connect with Joan’s story through their hands, senses and bodies.

Just as artists learn to see not just form but negative space – the shapes between things – so Joan’s outwardly abundant life transformed into an inner world: slower, quieter, less visible, but not lesser in any way.

Maybe this is a natural outcome of ageing… the gentle decluttering of ambition and a reshuffling of values. Or maybe Joan’s story is a simple reminder that richness cannot always be seen and meaning doesn’t always require an audience.

The symmetry in our shrinking trajectories is just an observation.

But it feels strangely right.

IN PROCESS…

Sunday 19th October, 11am-5pm and by appointment until 1st November.

The Vaults, 114 Bisley Road, Stroud

 

 

 

Creativity in times of destruction…

angela findlay8 Comments

“It’s brutal.”

That’s how a friend recently described being an artist. He had been a student at Goldsmiths in the late eighties and early nineties, during the rise of the Young British Artists (YBAs) like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, names that would go on to dominate the art world, thanks in part to the patronage of Charles Saatchi.

We ran into each other at the local paint shop—a regular stop for him in his current life as a decorator. Across a spread of tester pots and fillers, the conversation effortlessly turned to the day-to-day grind of being an artist. Over the summer I have been preparing for my forthcoming exhibition, In Process… (which opens today, 27th September!) and was feeling the impact of long, solitary studio days, wrestling with questions only I was posing and whose answers seemed only to matter to me. It can be a struggle: adhering to a discipline of showing up as captain to a ship with no passengers, steering a course to a nebulous destination, deep-diving into the depths of the soul, mind or body – wherever the well of creativity bubbles up – to haul tiny gems to the surface. Exhaustion and self-doubt often creep in.

‘What’s the point?’ is the main saboteur. The work seems irrelevant, the purpose elusive. There’s no financial gain, just costs. In the isolation of the studio, there’s no one to argue with those thoughts. Indeed it is easy to agree with them: Why bother?

And in times of widespread destruction – whether global or even personal – that sense of futility can grow.

This summer, for example, parts of my home were stripped back to their foundations. My life was overtaken by builders, noise, dusty cups of coffee and chaos. Creativity felt all but impossible. In the grand scheme of things, this was a minor inconvenience. Soon, things would return to normal. But what about those whose lives have been shattered by larger forces… wars, displacement, destruction and poverty on a massive scale? How does creativity find its place amidst the rubble of Gaza, Ukraine, or other war-torn regions? Or even amongst the devastating images that make their way into our minds?

History has shown that creativity can thrive in the moments when everything appears to be falling apart. Creative expression becomes a form of resilience, opposition, even survival. It can be a small act of regaining control in an otherwise uncontrollable situation; a conduit for grief, an out-breath for trauma, a balm for moral wounds. Marks on walls or scraps of paper cry out: I am still here.

In today’s news-filled world where conflicts and politics pitch people against each other while social media distracts and distorts, I feel the call to act. To do or say something that will make a difference. I contemplate taking to the streets and marching in protest. Or superglueing myself to a pavement. I wonder if ‘speaking out’ involves publishing endless blogs and posts on social media denouncing what (I feel) is wrong? Ineffectuality wears one down. 

But to me, the direction of the human race is a force majeure, too big for even the Trump to halt. We find ourselves swept in its rampageous current, both unwilling cogs in the destruction of things we once valued, and parts of an optimistic surge to re-build better. I feel feeble and impotent. When I can’t even open the lid on a jar of gherkins, how can I shift anything of significance? But maybe this disorientating maelstrom is precisely the context in which creativity becomes most vital. Maybe the internal orientation creativity demands provides a space for the mind to process, to breathe, to make light of the weight and sense of the senseless, and to find fragments of meaning in what frequently seems like an overwhelming mess.

Destruction can’t defeat creativity; it calls it forth, demanding that we seek beauty, purpose and points of connection. That process can feel ‘brutal’.  What’s the point? is never far away. But I try to remember: The point is not always to create something monumental. Nor is it to offer neat answers. Sometimes, the point is simply to make something that wasn’t there before, to keep moving forward and to hold onto the belief that every act of creation – however small and seemingly insignificant – is a counter movement, an act of defiance, a stand against that which threatens to destroy us. 

In Process… at The Vaults in Stroud

I have heaved my most recent exhibition out of a time of dark chaos. But as I – and it – clawed our way to the surface, it grew its own wings. Help came from unexpected places. Beauty emerged. And now it is there, in the Vaults, among the grapes on my vine, fruits to share.

There was a point!

You are so welcome to visit.

IN PROCESS…

In Process… Opening Times:  

  • Saturday & Sunday 27th/28th September, 11am-4pm
  • Monday 29th September – Friday 3rd October, 2-5pm
  • Saturday & Sunday 4th/5th October, 11am-5pm
  • Sunday 19th October 11am-5pm
  • And by appointment at other times throughout October (excluding 10th–17th and 22nd–26th October)

If you would like more context to the work in the exhibition prior to coming, please read my previous three blogs: Following Joan… Parts One, Two & Three.

Following Joan… Part One

angela findlay3 Comments

On 17th February 1939, Joan Margaret Legge boarded the T.S.S. Hector at Birkenhead’s Vittoria Docks and set sail for India. Surrounded by a flurry of last-minute flowers, letters and good wishes as well as Leica cameras, rolls of Kodak film and 17 packages from Fortnum & Mason, she began a four-week sea voyage that would deposit her in Mumbai. From there she would travel north by train to the Himalayan hill town of Ranikhet. And so, aged 54, began her greatest adventure.

The year before, Joan had read mountaineer Frank Smythe’s newly published book The Valley of Flowers and was so captivated by his descriptions of the majestic Himalayas that she resolved to go there herself. With the intention of adding to the collection of flower specimens Smythe had collected, she offered her services as a keen albeit amateur botanist to Kew Gardens, who willingly accepted sending her flower presses and detailed instructions on how to collect and preserve flora from the field. 

Some of Joan’s specimens from N. India in 1939, recently digitalised ©Kew Gardens

Her daily diary entries – written in tiny, meticulous script – and a remarkable collection of surviving photographs, now housed at the Stafford Archives, paint vivid scenes of rural life in northern India. As a woman navigating imperial times, Joan observed the stark poverty, the tangled legacy of British rule, and the troubling presence of Christian missionaries amid deeply rooted local faiths. Yet she did so with sensitivity and genuine curiosity, not the arrogance or entitlement so often associated with her era. She taught herself enough Hindustani to converse with those she met along the way, delighting in children, cups of tea, goats with saddle bags and botanical novelties in equal measure.

©Staffordshire History Centre

Several months of acclimatisation treks around Ranikhet gave her time to assemble a team of guides and porters and to test her equipment – tents, a canvas bath, ice axe and other supplies – in preparation for the ultimate trek to her final destination: the remote, high-altitude Bhyundar Valley, nestled just south of the Tibetan border. On May 22nd, they headed north.

31st May, 1939. Arrival at the Kuari Pass: “A very great day in one’s life”

As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, Joan was my great-great aunt on my father’s side. And last July, three other descendants and I retraced her Indian footsteps. Together with local guides who were already familiar with ‘Legge Ma’am’ as they fondly and reverently called her, we made our way to some of the same hills and valleys she once walked, recognising waterfalls, temples, holy trees, bridges and landscapes she had captured in both writing and image.

Like all pilgrimages to places of memory, her story seemed to reassemble itself in the elements around us: the humid air, the scent of pine needles crunching underfoot, the wind and monkeys dancing through the trees, the sheer drops and raging rivers, the saffron-clad pilgrims, and the fleeting glimpses of snow-covered peaks – ‘the Glories’, as Joan called them in her awe – emerging through shifting skies. As the four of us dipped our toes into the trials of that wild and beautiful land, its altitudes, its weather, its unfamiliar rhythms, her quiet courage and unflinching resilience rose steadily in our esteem.

Nilkanta 1939 ©Staffordshire History Centre
Nilkanta 2025

Joan’s story is that of an intrepid 54-year-old woman who displayed the same grit and independence as her more famous contemporaries, such as Gertrude Bell or Evelyn Cobbold. But unlike them, her path was quieter, deeply personal and largely unsung. Her modesty, her self-deprecating wit, and the sense of spiritual joy and serenity captured in her letters and journals only deepen the power of her achievement. The beauty and the tragedy of what came to pass have lifted Joan’s journey into something more than biography. It is a story that asks, gently but insistently, to be remembered. Maybe I am the last in our lineage to feel her so vividly. Maybe I am the one meant to tell it.

Vittoria Dock, Birkenhead 17.02.2025

With that in mind, on 17th February 2025, exactly 86 years after Joan set sail, I stood at Vittoria Docks in Birkenhead to symbolically wave her off. I imagined the Hector gliding down the Mersey, carrying with it not just Joan and her belongings, but the promise of new horizons and adventure. I walked beside the ghost of that ship until it reached the sea, trying to feel what she might have felt… the thrill and anxiety as she watched the landmass she called home and all that was familiar fade from view.

Daily Instagram posts: @ angela_findlay

Since that day, as some of you will know, I’ve been following Joan’s diary in real time, reenacting something she saw or did each day, capturing it through a single square photograph, posting it to Instagram, and translating it into an artistic rendition on a page in one of several dedicated sketchbooks.

Just as she did, I keep a written diary threading her life into my own. These past months have served as a reintroduction to my artistic practice, long abandoned as my brain grappled for a decade with words rather than images to write the story of my German grandfather. The process has involved an exploration of techniques in visual storytelling as I reacquaint myself with paints and brushes, scissors and glue, clay and plaster. Layers of collage stitch tenuous patterns between past and present, India and England, flowers living and long dead.

As today’s world echoes the precariousness of Joan’s, my gaze drifts over flowers and leaves, tracing their delicate lines in quiet wonder, both with my eyes and the tip of my pencil. My studio has stirred to life. And the steady rhythm of commitment and focus have birthed new creative ideas and potential collaborations.

Joan died on 4th July 1939. As that date approaches once again, I’m nearing the end of our shared journey. I will miss her – a courageous companion and inspiration. A daily reminder of a world that predated the horrors of WW2, ecological destruction, plastic waste and the proliferation of smart phones. But Joan’s story didn’t end with her death. And my telling of it doesn’t end in the fourth incomplete sketchbook.   

AI… An Artist’s Slippery Slope?

angela findlay14 Comments

This month I dipped my toe into the brilliant and deeply unsettling ocean of AI’s potential. I’m a bit late to the game, but for fun, I asked ChatGPT to write a synopsis of a piece based on a few scraps of information. Within seconds, it had. Not only that, it praised my “sensitive yet powerful” style and described my opening as “strong and reflective,” – causing a ridiculous flutter of flattery – before offering to adapt the piece into a short radio feature.

Writers are just one of many professions for whom AI is a game-changer: a time-saver, free editor, spell-checker, researcher and source of both inspiration… and misinformation. It was uncannily attuned to the contents of my book, In My Grandfather’s Shadow, which I’ve recently discovered had, along with millions of other authors’ works, been quietly harvested by Meta for AI training – without permission, acknowledgment, or any form of compensation. Authors’ licensing rights swept aside in the data goldrush.

At Bath Literature Festival last week, I interviewed Daniel Kehlmann – “the finest German writer of his generation,” according to Salman Rushdie. In his latest novel, The Director, Kehlmann reimagines the life of G.W. Pabst, a once-celebrated silent film director, tracing the moral compromises he made as he navigated a precarious and murky artistic path through the rise and fall of the Nazi regime. It is a brilliant read and couldn’t be more apposite.

I also watched the newly released film Riefenstahl, about one of the most controversial cultural figures of the Third Reich. Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Triumph of the Will is a visually stunning albeit ideologically chilling portrayal of the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Her talent for cinematic innovation is undeniable, but so is her closeness to Hitler and one of the darkest regimes in human history. To the end, however, she insisted she was not a Nazi but merely “an artist,” obsessed only with beauty, form, and structure. She claimed she had no knowledge of the Holocaust and never apologised. 

What links AI, Pabst, and Riefenstahl are questions of artistic freedom and moral compromise. Both directors pursued their creative ambitions under a political leadership that demanded ideological conformity. Riefenstahl willingly. Pabst, more reluctantly. But both became complicit in horror. And that complicity, as Kehlmann skilfully shows, is often quiet, mundane, and all too human.

One scene in The Director stays with me. Pabst’s wife, Trude, attends a stifling book club of wives of high-ranking Nazis. As coffee is served, the conversation drifts to the new porcelain set and a glittering sugar bowl. A flurry of admiration. Silence. Then a quiet, hesitant voice says she’s “seen one like that… but not here… over at the…” The implication is clear: the bowl came from a confiscated Jewish home. Beauty and brutality blend into the everyday.

Another scene captures the power of self-censorship. A member praises a banned play and is swiftly expelled from the group. “A circle like this is based on agreement,” the host says. “On harmony. Where that is not the case…” The others hang their heads and remain silent. Agreement through fear. Harmony through complicity. 

We probably all know such moments. Times we wanted to speak, but didn’t or felt we shouldn’t. 

Eighty plus years on, we are in very different times, but similar dynamics are re-surfacing in modern contexts, not least under Trump’s presidency, and certainly within our digital lives. AI, algorithms and social platforms are increasingly shaping what we see, create, think and consume, often without us even realising. The slope is slippery, not only because of dramatic, evil choices made by tyrants, but because of the many small, unexamined ones made by the rest of us.

I haven’t worked out yet how or where to dig my heels in to prevent what I fear is a downward slide. Ease is such a temptress after all. And maybe some of AI is no more morally fraught than the telephone, which saved – and lost – us the art of letter-writing; or the camera, which snapped rather than painted landscapes; or Google Maps, which delivers us to destinations with little connection to the journey. Our tool kits for life have always evolved with time. So isn’t it right, necessary even, to adopt and adapt?

Maybe yes. But AI has no values. No morality. No nuance. No sense of consequence. Those are ours to guard with vigilance and intention, in the choices we make and the art we create. Because isn’t beauty inseparable from ethics? Aren’t feeling, meaning, soul, responsibility the very qualities that still set us apart from technology; the keys to remaining humane?

Detail of painting by Angela Findlay

I remember decades ago walking into a David Hockney retrospective at the Royal Academy. Near the entrance hung a series of portraits, typical of Hockney’s flat distinctive style, but they felt particularly mechanical, soulless. Inside, I saw the same portraits again, but these positively vibrated with life and presence. The former I learned, were digital reproductions, technically flawless, visually identical, but missing the very essence of art – human creativity, the trace of touch, the soul behind the brushstroke.

That’s how we know when something is real. Our souls have a gauge for truth.

We feel it.

Further Reading and News:

How to Make Art Under the Nazis (Without Losing Your Soul)

Riefenstahl review – nauseating yet gripping story of Nazi poster woman

I am participating in Site Festival 2025 Open Studios: SALE of older work, & new project to view. Sat 14th – Sun 15th June 11am – 5pm; Sat 21st – Sun 22nd June 11am – 5pm. Or by appointment

This liminal space…

angela findlay8 Comments

It will be different for everybody. But I love the quietness of these in-between days… 

That bloated weariness from endless festivities and good will. The jaded sparkle of unwrapped gifts spilling out of recycling bins. The jingle of carols fading as the challenges of Christmas are banished into as distant a future as any one year allows. 

For me there’s a sense of peace. A release from the storm of traditions. A disorientation. A heart full of gratitude.

With New Year still to celebrate, there’s just one last real or symbolic cork to pop. Then it’s back to reality with its resolutions, rhythms and routines. Bleak mid-winter stretched unruffled, a blanket of dark fields tucked into the horizon over a sleeping, muddy countryside.

Trees stand brittle, skeletal. We know Spring will come, but in the immediate months ahead it is easy to lose faith that colour, light and warmth will ever return. 

Looking closely, however (with a slightly alarming nod to climate change), small promises have already started to decorate bare branches like fairy lights. A little pink blossom here, a tiny green bud there.

But it is out of sight, below the earth’s surface, where the real hope and action thrive. 

My recent move from storage to studio has uncovered numerous sketches and paintings I haven’t looked at for over twenty years. They were painted in the nineties when I lived on the west coast of Ireland consciously engaging with the four seasons and their corresponding echo within the inner rhythms of a human lifespan. Inspired by Celtic mythology and various spiritual traditions, my thirty-something-year-old self saw winter as Mother Earth’s pregnant womb, and Spring the birth and dance of youth. 

On a soul level, we experience winter in those times when it appears nothing is happening. When everything seems dead, stuck, over. It can feel eternal and deeply uncomfortable. We might search for escape in company, drink, exercise, work… or chocolate and movies. Might make wrong decisions through impatience to crank up the old and move forward. Then one tiny shoot of new growth breaks through the surface and into our lives. The season changes and Winter’s purpose is revealed as saps start to rise unstoppably. Energy returns after its slump… or slumber. Because of its slump or slumber. New creativity flows. Our soul’s spring has arrived.

In the meantime, this darkness can nourish us. It invites stillness and rest. Quiet intimacy. Soul. Life is tiring… winter offers us a chance to withdraw and replenish our energies. So I welcome these dark mornings, short days and early nights – ideally interrupted by crisp sunshine to brighten the spirits – as a period of germination. An opportunity to lay off the guilt of achieving less as we enrich more. A time of holding rather than pushing.

With all that in mind, I wish you a gentle, inspiring, meaningful and happy path into your New Year.

(All the paintings above are a mixture of acrylic and/or pastel and roughly 75x55cm)

Can one be utterly awe-struck and ethical when it comes to the United Arab Emirates?

angela findlay5 Comments

As Cop28 UAE drew to its unsatisfactory conclusion, it felt ironic to find myself standing in the Rub’ al Khali desert south of Abu Dhabi, home to the largest oilfield in the world, learning from a little tour into the dunes how fossil fuels were created from, well, fossils. I know, duh, so obvious. But they are the fossils of the living creatures that died out when the earth heated and killed them all. It was one of those kind of cosmic full circle / cycle moments. 

I was never naturally drawn to the Middle East, but when an opportunity arose to visit the United Arab Emirates, I embarked on the trip with the same determination with which I approached the research behind my book on WW2: to suspend judgement of perceived villains in order to try to understand, in this case those who are producing the black sticky substance that is now threatening to kill us all. 

Within the context of the environmental disaster story, it is all too easy to dismiss places such as Dubai as mere playgrounds for foreign fat cats, one Big Dick competition between oil-rich nations with just-because-we-can attitudes. Yet within minutes of my arrival, my jaw was hanging open and it rarely closed over the following week.

My astonishment came not so much from the giddying heights of shiny vertical monoliths thrusting into an intense cobalt sky scribbled with diagonal crane arms, but from the fact that less than eighty years ago when much of Europe lay in ruins, this whole area was desert inhabited by nomadic Bedouin living in tents. After so many years focused on the destruction of war, I found it staggering, humbling, inspiring even to witness construction on such a scale: 360° infinity pools suspended 200 meters in the air, restaurants, offices, malls, endless apartments (all serviced by smiley Indians, Pakistanis and Africans keen to make money as most Emiratis don’t work or even live here.) Not to mention the Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building at 830 meters…

Further down the coast in Abu Dhabi, a brand-new Louvre, a Guggenheim in the making, the breath-takingly beautiful Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and vast Qasr Al Watan Presidential Palace… (in order below)

Terrible inequalities within this gleaming urban landscape are inevitable and as old as the world. But for once I allowed myself to temporarily look beyond the blatant, at times nauseating bling and consumerism and enjoy areas where sheer skill and innovation meet deeply considered, exceptionally designed aesthetics and architecture.

A few days of cycling through the different districts that transform into twinkling wonderlands as the red ball of the sun plummets behind the horizon, left me questioning the ethics of my unstoppable sense of awe… admiration even. Was it misplaced within the context of all that is wrong with Dubai, excessive wealth, power, oil? Or did it arise from the sense that I was witnessing the creation of modern-day equivalents to the buildings of antiquity? Cathedrals, pyramids, temples… also built using underpaid workforces or slaves and designed to reflect the beliefs of the times and honour the God(s) of a particular culture. From the widespread secular perspective of the 21stcentury, those Gods were clearly false. And yet we still appreciate with wonder what was created in their name. 

What particularly struck me were the gaps between the buildings so integral to the overall impact of this brand new, place. The negative spaces of empty sky between the materiality of the physical manifestations. 

Materialism, in the philosophical sense of the word, started with a shift in the perception of reality from a focus on the invisible, creative force of life, often located far above, to the physical world below. It was the transition Giotto made in art in the 14th century from the gold or deep blue heavens of Byzantine art to the cerulean sky of the natural world. 

I initially decided these glitzy skyscrapers were obvious ‘Temples to Oil’ designed to boast and out-do competitors in height and status. But a week with my brother, who has lived and worked in the Middle East for over a decade, made me see it is not as simple as that. That they are less odes to oil and more a demonstration of what can be done with money. 

Ultimately I could not live in such a place. Far more appealing were the small coastal town of Khasab in the Musandam region of North Oman where brightly clothed children waved at us from dusty building plots and pristine fjords surrounded by soft golden cliffs were home to dolphins, tropical fish and small isolated villages of fishermen.

I wonder whether one can compare the money made from oil with the money made from drug dealers. Are the dealers to blame or is it the need for any destructive substance that lies at the root of the problem or dependency that inevitably develops? I have much more to learn, digest and think about and I am aware my ponderings are based on the superficial experience of an uninformed tourist. But the trip has undoubtedly broadened my mind and changed some of my perceptions of the world. For starters, it made me want to throw all my carefully segregated recyclables straight into the bin… what is the point after all?! But the idea of blaming some generic environmental ‘baddy’ also reminds me of the Dire Straits lyrics: “When you point your finger cos your plan fell through, you got three more fingers pointing back at you.” After all, don’t I belong to the nations who discovered oil, grew their industries, wealth and world influence from it, enjoyed the comforts and conveniences it brought and subsequently became utterly dependent on it?

If I don’t get another chance, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for reading my Blogs and to wish you very happy, peaceful festivities ahead, warm homes and hearts and a wonderful start to 2024.

In Praise of Empty Space…

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November, in many cultures, is the month designated to remembering those who are no longer there. With a strange synchronicity, everything I did, watched, read or listened to pointed towards ‘absence,’ that non-presence devoid of form that artists call ‘negative space.’ “Empty space is the silence between musical notes, the pauses in poetry, the stillness of a dancer. Therein often lies the meaning or drama of a piece.” (In My Grandfather’s Shadow, Ch 11, p.144)  

I have just returned from a week in St Ives, the Cornish place that boasts the highest concentration of blue light in the UK and challenges many an artist to capture its effect in paint. A kind author friend each year offers her house of clean white rooms overlooking the beach and cliffs as a form of writing retreat for three of her fellow writer friends. All four of us want to make the most of precious time out, so the interiors fall silent during the days that in turn empty of all structure, just as our minds declutter of chores. 

I spent my time reading the diaries of my intrepid, spinster great great aunt, who travelled alone to the Himalayas in 1939 to gather flowers for Kew Gardens. I followed her slow, awe-filled progress as she step-by-stepped her precarious way through lofty peaks and flower- or snow-filled valleys, pausing with her when she rested to stare at the perfectly choreographed performance of clouds and weather dancing in front of my window. Thoughts wafted through my mind, some being noted, others just fading in and out like rainbows. For a whole week, I simply was.

My time there, along with books and films I have recently ingested, have been making me realise just how much I miss and yearn to regain some of what I remember loving doing as a child… nothing. Being born a day-dreamer, the spaces between activity and connection were always filled with a rich, albeit invisible world that had the capacity to entertain, or indeed bore. Boredom… how rarely we have time for that potentially creative vacuum within today’s ubiquitous overload of information, social media and communications that interrupt our rhythms with an octave of pings. I don’t think this is just a grumpy, old-age thing. (Well it may be a bit.) This nostalgia is captured well in ‘The End of Absence’ by the considerably younger and hipper author, Michael Harris. He reminds us of what we are in danger of losing as generations, who have never known life without the internet, gradually overtake those of us who have. 

The recently released and highly acclaimed film ‘Living’ based on the book by Akira Krosawa, screen written by Kazuo Ishiguro and starring Bill Nighy is set in 1950s London. Not a lot happens, and what does, happens incredibly slowly. The cinematography is stunning and emulates the subtle grace described in ‘In Praise of Shadows,’ a slim book by Junichiro Tanizaki that gently reveals traditional Japanese aesthetics and use of space. Unlike us in the west where the achievement of light is basically both goal and God, in Japan it was – and maybe still is in places – the creation of shadows that was the source of beauty and mystery. This quiet understatement is part of what I want to rediscover.

Another film I watched where even less happens but with still more potency and power, is The Banshees of Inisherin. Dark, sad, funny and impeccable in every way, including the acting of its two ‘In Bruges’ stars, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, it basically portrays the painful ending of an long-standing friendship caused by the simple declaration by one: ‘I don’t want to be friends with you anymore’. The extensive space the film allows each facial movement, scene, sentence… one can almost feel the multi-layered clutter of ones own world begging to be emptied into black bin bags, or deleted.

With this increasingly strong desire to create more space, I decided to have a big Studio Sale of my art. (All works available can be viewed here.) And to finally sort through my real and digital filing office and cabinets in order to establish more clarity and space for new shoots and fruits. 

WWW.ANGELAFINDLAY.COM

So with the start of Advent this Sunday and the build-up to the crazy, all-consuming Christmas season, I would like to invite you to join me in seeking out and reclaiming some of those quiet spaces life used to offer in abundance, and still does if we just stop… feel… and dream our way into them.

Wishing you a very Happy and Meaningful Advent…

Related Links

To buy my book, In My Grandfather’s Shadow, as a Christmas present, please order from your local bookshop or online here

“In My Grandfather’s Shadow’ is a brave, powerful, honest, thoughtful and meticulously researched book. I enjoyed it immensely. It has made me think very hard about intergenerational trauma transfer and explains so much about Germany, and perhaps, in the current context, Russia.” General Sir Richard Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe and author of ‘War with Russia’

To listen to the recent 5-part Interview with Chris Baxter on Radio West, please go to BBC iPlayer here

To look through and/or buy a piece of ART please go to my website: www.angelafindlay.com

Cycling the Berlin Wall Way… an education, a warning, an inspiration

angela findlay7 Comments

In the faultless pageantry of Queen Elizabeth’s recent funeral, we witnessed one of the things that Britain does really well. Whether you are pro- or anti-monarchy, it was a spectacular display of planning, coordination, ritual, symbolism and attention to detail, as well as a gratitude- and love-filled farewell to the only ‘Her Majesty’ we have known. Impossible though it might sound, I missed most of it!

I was in Berlin experiencing what Germany does really well: remembrance and commemoration of a difficult and painful history. It was, however, not Germany’s intensive and on-going process of coming to terms with its Nazi past that I was focused on. This time, I was with my two siblings cycling the Berlin Wall Way, a continuous bicycle path that follows the former footprint of the 100-mile long Berlin Wall as closely as possible. Taking five days to complete, with added time to explore some of the many poignant locations in the centre, it was a total eye-opener, not least to the very concept of a divided city and country.

Map of West Berlin with the 160km Wall marked in red

The first initially confusing fact to digest is that, contrary to the widely held idea that the Berlin Wall was a north-to-south boundary separating West and East Berlin, in reality the wall went all the way round West Berlin thereby creating a democratic West German island within socialist East Germany. Even with a map, we found ourselves frequently asking: So, are we in the West or the East? the answer to which, I assure you, is rarely as straightforward or obvious as it sounds.

The second tangible shock felt while snaking along its course, was the utter illogic and arbitrariness of this ideological divide – through streets, houses, communities, lakes and woodlands. This randomness would have started as a line drawn on a map by the leaders of the victorious nations – USA’s President Harry S. Truman, Josef Stalin of the USSR, Britain’s prime ministers Winston Churchill and then Clement Attlee as well as other leading members of the three delegations present. That’s probably how most of the other contested border lines around the world have originated. To engage with the whole concept of division, not to mention the impact it had on families and friends separated for nearly three decades, is almost impossible. An enormous 360˚panorama entitled THE WALL by artist Jadegar Asisi gave us arguably our most immediate and visceral sense of being in West Berlin looking at and over the wall into the deadly world behind.

From the360˚ panorama THE WALL by Jadegar Asisi

The third challenge was understanding the complex evolution and structure of the wall that was built in three phases, starting overnight on 13th August 1961 as Berliners slept. What began as a barbed wire barrier and the closure of all but 13 of the 81 established crossing points between the Western and Soviet sectors, eventually developed into not one but two concrete walls separated by a corridor of no man’s land known as the ‘death strip’ with mines, raked sand to detect footprints, trip wire machine guns and armed East German guards in watch towers or patrolling on foot with dogs. By 1989, the Wall was lined with 302 watchtowers and more than 136 people had died trying to cross it.

An example of a section of the wall. What we call the Berlin Wall is on the left

Our little trio started our circumnavigation of West Berlin on the famous Glienicker Bridge in Potsdam in the middle of which spies were on a number of occasions exchanged in the dead of night.

Glienicker Bridge

Following a reassuringly well-marked ‘Mauerweg’ route, we soon passed Schloss Cecilienhof, host to the 1945 Potsdam Conference where the division of Berlin and Germany into occupied zones was decided. From there we hugged the shoreline of beautiful lakes, passing the Sacrower Heilandskirche, the church stranded in the controlled border strip and cut off from its congregation.

Heilandskirche, Sacrow, 1961

Heading north, we reached Alexander House, whose history became the subject of the acclaimed book by Thomas Harding, The House by the Lake, and is now a place of education and reconciliation.

Alexander House: The House by the Lake

Staying in different hotels en route at intervals of roughly 30 miles enabled us to gain a sense of the scale of the wall and the extraordinary episode in history that only ended a little over 30 years ago. Sections of the concrete boundary, a double cobbled stripe embedded into the pavement or road surface, information boards with photographs and explanations all punctuated our journey.

Most moving were the memorials telling heartbreaking stories of failed escapes, largely by young twenty-something-year-old men. With the same unflinching honesty for which all German WW2 or Holocaust-related museums and memorials have come to be known, these allowed us to feel the individual human cost of an ideology based on fear and a necessity to keep people in rather than keeping undesirables out, as the East’s ‘Anti-Fascist Wall’ name misleadingly proclaimed.

Continuing along canals and suburbs, we crossed the ‘Bösebrücke,’ the ‘Bad Bridge’ or Bornholm Bridge that made history on the evening of 9th November 1989 through the jubilant scenes of East Germans flooding across to be greeted by their Western “brothers and sisters” with sparkling wine, cheers and hugs while bemused Eastern border guards watched on helplessly. Unlike my former visits to Berlin while researching for my book, it was this joyous energy of liberation that primarily accompanied me on this trip and allowed me to experience the incredible resilience of Berlin’s inhabitants, past and present, and the revival of its worldwide status as a brilliantly creative, thriving city.

The Bornholm Bridge today and 1989 (pictured)

On we cycled, heading south through the beautifully curated but frequently harrowing Mauerpark (Wall Park) that leads into the Bernauer Strasse from which many of the well-known pictures of people jumping out of house windows into tautly held blankets in the West were taken. It was also the street under which various escape tunnels were dug similar to that shown in the 1962 documentary, The Tunnel and including the ‘Tunnel 29’ of the brilliant podcast and book with the same name.

Bernauer Strasse: a 1971 ‘Flight tunnel'(L) and photographs from the Western side of the wall 1961 (R)

An extended section of the wall and border strip have been preserved as a chilling testimony to its once terrifying presence.

Bernauer Strasse

The Wall then continues through Berlin Mitte past some of Berlin’s most famous landmarks: the Reichstag, the Brandenberg Gates, Under den Linden and the Tiergarten, past Potsdamer Platz and Check Point Charlie and along the boundary of what is now one of Berlin’s most chilling museums – the Topography of Terror – but what once was the location of many of the most sinister ministries of the Nazi regime. Then through graffiti-covered Kreuzberg, over the River Spree and to the longest surviving stretch of the inner wall painted in 1991 by painters from all over the world to form the colourful East Side Gallery.

Eastside Gallery: ‘My God. Help me to survive this deadly love.” From a press photograph of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker painted by by Dmitri Vrubel.

The final 40 miles or so along the southern strip of the wall’s course back to Potsdam was largely rural. A sense of peace replaces the former horror of all that the border came to represent. Long stretches of open fields, avenues of birch trees and an alley of 800 ornamental cherry trees donated by Japanese citizens and a TV station in 1995 “out of joy over the reunification of Germany.”

Finally, the three of us arrived back on the Glienicker Bridge from which we had begun our trip, each a little changed, each with a greater knowledge and understanding of German history and our German roots. Each with different emotional responses but a shared sense of the ultimate triumph of humanity and freedom over inhumane systems of repression.

Back on Glienicker Bridge

Upcoming Events relating to my book – In My Grandfather’s Shadow:

Friday 7th October, 7pm. Ebeneza Presents, Somerset: In My Grandfather’s Shadow. More information and tickets here

Sunday 9th October, 4pm. Cuckfield Book Festival: I will be in conversation with Julia Boyd, the best-selling author of Travellers in the Third Reich and A Village in the Third Reich.
More information and tickets here. 

Wednesday 12th October, 4pm. Mere Literary Festival: In Conversation with Jo Hall. More information and tickets here

Sunday 3rd November, 8.30pm. Stroud Book Festival: In Conversation with Alice Jolly, novelist, playwright and memoirist. More information and tickets here

Where Earth meets Art

angela findlay4 Comments

There’s something about August that has left me with a form of blog-blankness.

It may be due to my first bout of covid leaving me in a congested fog. Or the fact that the news and politics are too depressing to listen to let alone engage with. I mean, just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, we are faced with the increasingly likely prospect of Liz Truss becoming prime minister! 

Whichever way you look, there’s evidence of climate change, stories of polluted rivers, strikes, shortages, waste, price hikes, incompetency… Seeking out the positives is possible, there are plenty of them around. But most people are having to dig deep to find resources of resilience. For some, these will be primarily financial: basic survival – food, heating, shelter. For others, the focus might be on mental or physical health, practicalities, business strategies… or a mix of all of the above. Somehow it all feels so huge.

Today I did something I haven’t done for a while. I went to an art exhibition. Entitled EARTH: Digging Deep in British Art 1781-2022, it was the fourth in Bristol’s RWA series based on the four elements.  Earth has made a regular appearance in my work. It was a major component of my mud paintings, of my exhibition Re-dressing Absence about the paupers buried in Stroud Cemetery in unmarked graves, and it features prominently in my recently published book In My Grandfather’s Shadow (IMGS) both literally and metaphorically. 

Me gathering River Severn mud for my paintings, 2002

I can’t say the RWA’s EARTH was the most interesting exhibition I’ve ever been to in my life, but in my current mind-fog state of finding it hard to form a coherent narrative about anything, I’d like to intermingle some of my thoughts, experiences and passages from my book relating to ‘earth’ with loosely corresponding artworks by some of the exhibiting artists. 

For me, the earth – as old as time itself – holds the memories of history. ‘Like a smell or tune or piece of material heritage, a particular location can instantly evoke a past that appears to have been buried.’ (IMGS p. 145)

Katie Paterson (b. 1981) Fossil Necklace, 2013
Katie Paterson (b. 1981) Fossil Necklace, 2013

It absorbs the blood, sweat and tears of humanity’s passage over its surface. 

Paul Nash (1889-1946) Spring in the Trenches, Ridge Wood 1917, 1918

It is the life-giving womb of Mother Nature and a resting place for most of us after death. 

Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) Downs in Winter, 1935

Earth offers a metaphor for our hidden roots. ‘Though at times it felt like it, I am, of course far from the only person to try to rattle and sieve the truth from the soil of the past. But the truth is not easily dislodged when it is triple-bound by trauma, guilt and accusations of complicity.’ (IMGS p. 279)

Michael Porter RWA (b. 1948) Dirt Series, 2018-2021

It’s a place of darkness, difficult to access, but also the guardian of precious secrets, materials and gems. ‘While I continued to pursue answers to unresolved questions, sometimes I dreaded having to descend like a miner into the darkness of the Second World War. It always took so long to adjust to the lack of light and air…’ (IMGS p. 314)

Graham Sutherland OM (1903-1980) Tin Mine, Emerging Miner 1942

It became part of my process to come to terms with my German heritage. ‘There was one more task to accomplish before we left La Stanga: my soil ritual. With its fusion of site-specific rite, remembrance and reconciliation, I had come to see this… as a form of acupuncture, using a trowel instead of needles to stimulate the healing of wounded places and wounded people…’ (IMGS p. 150)

Emma Stibbon RA RWA (b. 1962) Broken Terrain, 2017

The earth holds energy. And as David Malone says in his beautiful BBC documentary The Secret Life of Waves, ‘Energy can never be destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. That is the premise of the intergenerational transmission of emotions that I have written about in In My Grandfather’s Shadow. That is why I instinctively traveled to significant places as part of my research. That is why I used earth in my art and my ritual. I wanted to feel the energy and work with that energy in order to understand.

Maybe, if we just keep noticing and moving towards those little moments when all the elements are in perfect harmony, we will find the inner resilience we need to get through the more challenging times.

Sunrise

EVENTS COMING UP:

Thursday 22nd September, 2pm: The Chelsea History Festival at the National Army Museum, London.
Join Angela Findlay as she discusses the process of coming to terms with her grandfather’s wartime service in the German Army and the heritability of guilt. Book tickets here  

Monday 26th September, 3-6.30pm: Online Training: Developing a Shame-Informed Approach Information and Registration here 

Sunday 9th October, 4pm: Cuckfield Book Festival. Julia Boyd and Angela Findlay in conversation about A Village in the Third Reich and In My Grandfather’s Shadow. More information and tickets here

Wednesday 12th October, 4pm: Mere Literary Festival. Angela Findlay in conversation with Jo Hall. More information and tickets here 

Bearing witness to war… thanks to Marie Colvin and Don McCullin

angela findlay1 Comment

Marie Colvin: “Despite all the videos you see [from governments] and all the sanitised language… the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers, children.”*

Don McCullin: “War is partly madness, mostly insanity and the rest of it is schizophrenia.”

UK Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson: “Brexit has brought us to a great moment in our history. A moment when we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass…” and be willing to take military action and able to deploy “hard power”.**

While the ‘War’ Secretary flexes our national muscles, anti-war rhetoric is headlining in cinemas and art galleries. And I for one welcome it with open arms because it is coming from people who have experienced war first hand.

Seven years ago, on 22nd February 2012, Marie Colvin, one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time, was killed while covering the Siege of Homs in Syria. The recently released film A Private War is a powerful homage to her and the relentless bravery she displayed at the frontlines of the world’s most dangerous conflicts in order “to bear witness” to the human suffering. Easily recognisable by her trademark black eyepatch, American-born Colvin worked for The Sunday Times for more than 25 years. By the time she died aged 56, she had probably seen more war than most soldiers.

Paul Conroy and Marie Colvin on her final assignment
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